Maybe I should have just written a book...

Another Christmas has come and gone. All the presents have been opened. All the chaos has subsided. All the travel is finished. All in all, I'd call it a success. Then again, this was my 31st Christmas, and I am yet to see an unsuccessful one.

Christmas Eve
The festivities began at 5:00 on Christmas Eve with the candle light service at Central Baptist. It was nice enough, although I find it hard to enjoy such an old-fashioned 1950's way of experiencing church. Traditional can be nice sometimes, but I don't understand how the regular attendees there can bear it week in and week out.

The church service was followed immediately by the Swanson family gathering at Kimberly's aunt and uncle's house. It's always fun and nice. The food is good, and everyone is friendly and in good spirits. There are only two downsides of this:

1. The house is the same size as it has always been, and the family has been growing faster and faster over the recent years as all the kids are growing up, getting married, and having kids (admittedly, Kimberly and I are part of this problem as well).

2. This has conflicted with a small tradition my own family has had for the past 19 years: the annual family Christmas Eve movie. This started when my brother, sister, and I were bouncing off the walls on Christmas Eve of 1990. My parents, in a last-ditch effort to settle us down, took us to the theater to see Home Alone. We enjoyed it so much that we just kept doing it every year.

I'll admit, the DK Dorris' are responsible for breaking this tradition. Everyone in my immediate family is married now. I have a kid, and Shaunna has one on the way. With all of the big doings (that I will soon be delving into), Cohen needs to get a decent amount of sleep. With everything else going on, we just didn't have the time for the movie. Initially I put up a big fight about it. I wanted to keep the tradition alive. After a lengthy discussion however, I finally gave in. After thinking about it further, I came to the realization that it really would be for the best to skip out on it. I'd rather miss a movie and have Cohen well rested and good for all the next day's activities than make him stay up past his bedtime making him cranky all night and through the next day just so I could appease a nice tradition that once had purpose but is now practiced for the simple reason that it's what we always do.

Anyway, moving on...

Christmas Day
Christmas morning started for us around 6:00. Truth be told, I love Christmas morning, and even without having a kid, I would have wanted to get up that early anyway. Cohen just made it not look so silly for a 30-year-old to be up at 6:00 on Christmas morning. Cohen got up at that time on his own. We had our traditional sausage balls, pigs-in-blanket, and Quik Trip coffee breakfast, opened our presents, and were done by 10:00. At this point, we headed next door to the in-laws for Christmas: Round 2 (Round 3 if you count the Swanson Christmas Eve doings).

We actually have two Christmas-es at Kimberly's parents' house. The first is for her immediate family. This goes from about 10:00 till about 12:30. Then, at 1:00, Kimberly's aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandfather come over (this is the Hiatt side of the family, whereas Christmas Eve was the Swanson side).

So, basically from 10:00am until roughly 3:00pm, we have a five-hour eating/present opening marathon. It's actually a lot of fun if you don't mind a little chaos. There are 3 children present for the first half of it, and two more are added for the second half of it. (Side note: I can't wait until Cohen is the age that his cousin A.J. is now. Some of those toys look awesome, and I can't wait to play with them.)

Oh, but wait. We're not nearly done!

Around 3:00, we walk back over to our house. Cohen grabs a quick nap, while Kimberly showers, and I crash on the couch to recharge my own battery. At 4:00, we're in the car on the way to my parents' house. Given that Cohen is the only kid at this point, it's still a little more adult-oriented in that for the most part, it's nice and quiet. There's a lot of good conversation, and not a lot of general craziness. This will change, I'm sure, as in the next few years, Martha will be here and she and Cohen will be getting older, playing together, and creating all kinds of ruckus just like their parents did when they were kids.

Good times were had by all. Tons of snack food, lots of laughs, and a day's worth of being on the go had taken its toll on Cohen, Kimberly, and myself. We came home a little after 9:00, did some minimal straightening around the house, and while Kimberly went to bed, I made a quick run up to the shop. I had forgotten that I had promised my uncle in Tennessee that I would bring him some vinyl graphics. After getting the graphics ready to go and loading up my installation tools, I was back home and in bed by 11:00. We had a big day ahead of us.

Tennessee
One would think that a 4-hour drive with a one-year-old would be a challenge. For some people it may be, but for us it actually works out well. The first two hours are perfect for a long nap for Cohen. We stop for a few minutes to give him lunch, then the next two hours, he plays with some of his toys. Before you know it, we're pulling into my grandparents' house.

Day one was the Swann family gathering. I'll let you in on a little secret...between my mom's family and my dad's family, this is the one I look forward to and enjoy. I spent most of the evening catching up with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. The night was capped off with a rousing game of Taboo. I almost missed the game because Kimberly and I were going to go to bed, having had a busy couple of days, but I decided to stay up and play, just to even out the teams. I'm glad I did. It was nice spending an extra hour or two with the family. Pawpaw provided the lion's share of the entertainment during the game. If you don't know my Pawpaw...he's awesome and hilarious with a very distinct sense of humor that I've never seen with anyone else. All of his jokes are funny, even if only half of his jokes are intentional.

I finally crashed around midnight after a toilet/plunger debacle that I will not discuss further.

Sunday morning, it was up, breakfast, shower, pack, load, drive. We drove about 30 minutes to the booming metropolis of Greenbrier, TN, population 6,553 (in 2007). My dad's parents live on 40 acres at the end of a long road that has only been paved for a couple of years. It's beautiful land...but that's about all it is. Beautiful land. Fields surrounded by woods, with a little farm house sitting right in the middle of it. If we weren't in such a hurry to get back on the road; if we had time to relax and take it in, it would have been nice. This was not the case however. Our agenda for the day was: Go, say hi, eat lunch, catch up, then we have to go. And we did just that. We left their house at 2:30 (eastern), hit a little traffic around Chattanooga, then were home by 7:30.

To sum up, Christmas is fun. I have always been a fan, and I can't imagine a day when I won't look forward to it, enjoy it, and look back fondly at it. Both of our families (Swansons and Dorris' alike) do entirely too much for us. We're definitely thankful, but how could we possibly ask for more than the love and support they give us on a daily basis?

I got my first real experience in assembling toys this year. So far...not that bad. With the exception of a botched wagon assembly (nothing a little electrical tape wouldn't fix), things went without a hitch.

I look forward to it again next year.